5.  The applicants were born in 1971 and 1974 respectively and live in Cahul.
6.  The applicants were arrested in Russia in October 2000 and were thereafter extradited to Moldova. They were then ill-treated in order to compel them to make self-incriminatory statements and were convicted by the Moldovan courts, relying, inter alia, on such confessions (for more details, see Levinţa v. Moldova, no. 17332/03, 16 December 2008).
7.  On 16 December 2008 the Court adopted a judgment in the above-cited Levinţa case, finding a violation of Articles 3 and 6 of the Convention. On the basis of that judgment and the applicable domestic law (see paragraph 22 above), on 3 April 2009 the applicants lodged an extraordinary appeal (recurs în anulare), seeking the annulment of their convictions.
8.  On 8 February 2010 the Plenary Supreme Court of Justice accepted the request and quashed all the previously adopted judgments, ordering a re-hearing of the case and verification of whether the applicants’ complaint of ill-treatment was well-founded. In the operative part of its ruling the court also ordered the following: “[the applicants] shall continue to be detained; the trial court shall decide on the preventive measure”.
9.  On 10 February 2010 the applicants’ lawyer complained to the Minister of Justice and the Prosecutor General. He asked for his clients’ immediate release because of the absence of any valid decision by an investigating judge or a trial court ordering their detention pending trial, as required by law. In response, the Prosecutor General’s Office referred to the judgment of 8 February 2010, while the Ministry of Justice noted that it had not been informed of any judgment in respect of the applicants after 16 April 2002.
10.  On 15 March 2010 the Supreme Court of Justice sent the case for examination by the Chişinău Court of Appeal.
11.  On 13 April 2010 the applicants’ lawyer asked the Chişinău Court of Appeal to order his clients’ immediate release, in the absence of any court order for their detention pending trial. On the same date, the prosecutor’s office requested that the same court order the applicants’ detention pending trial for thirty days. According to the applicants, the prosecution did not submit any evidence in support of that request.
12.  On 14 April 2010 the court held a preliminary hearing during which it examined the parties’ requests. However, the court did not adopt any decision and postponed the hearing until 16 April 2010. On the latter date it again postponed the hearing until 19 April 2010.
13.  On 19 April 2010 the Chişinău Court of Appeal noted that the Plenary Supreme Court of Justice had not decided the issue of applying preventive measures in its judgment of 8 February 2010. It further stated that it would deal with the parties’ requests in that respect and found that:
“[The applicants’] continued detention is necessary in order to ensure the proper conduct of the criminal proceedings, taking into account that there are reasonable grounds to believe that they have committed the crimes of which they are accused, crimes which are considered to be exceptionally serious; [there are reasons to believe that] they could abscond from the court and obstruct the criminal proceedings.”
Accordingly, the court rejected the applicants’ lawyer’s request of 13 April 2010 and ordered their detention for thirty days, starting from 2 p.m. on 14 April 2010. The court also relinquished its jurisdiction in favour of the Supreme Court of Justice.
14.  On 22 April 2010 the applicants’ lawyer lodged an appeal with the Supreme Court of Justice. He repeated his argument concerning the absence of any court decision and arrest warrant ordering his clients’ detention pending trial as required by law. He also submitted that the Chişinău Court of Appeal had breached the presumption of his clients’ innocence, which was clear from its finding of “reasonable grounds” to believe that they had committed the crimes of which they were accused. Moreover, the applicants’ detention pending trial had lasted for more than the maximum twelve months allowed by law. He added that the prosecution had not submitted any evidence in support of their contentions concerning the risks associated with the applicants’ release. The lawyer noted that the prosecution had not made any request for the applicants’ detention pending trial prior to the judgment of 8 February 2010. He finally complained about the Chişinău Court of Appeal’s two decisions to postpone its hearings concerning the applicants’ detention pending trial.
15.  At 10.30 a.m. on 13 May 2010 the applicants’ lawyer was contacted on his mobile phone by a Supreme Court of Justice judge, who informed him that a hearing of the appeal was scheduled for 12 p.m. the same day. Apparently, the lawyer managed to reach the court in time for the hearing. The Supreme Court of Justice rejected the applicants’ appeal as unfounded. Having summed up the grounds on which the prosecution had relied, it found that:
“In verifying the lawfulness of [the applicants’] detention pending trial, the lower court fully complied with the [relevant provisions of] law, being competent to decide on the issue of applying preventive measures. In the absence of any procedural violations in deciding on [the applicants’] detention pending trial, there are no reasons to quash the lower court’s decision. The lawyer’s request is therefore to be dismissed.”
The court also found that the Chişinău Court of Appeal was the competent trial court in the present case.
16.  According to the applicants, at 2 p.m. on 13 May 2010 the applicants’ lawyer was again contacted on his mobile telephone by a clerk of the Chişinău Court of Appeal and was informed that a hearing was scheduled for 4 p.m. the same day concerning a request by the prosecution to extend his clients’ detention. The lawyer was in Anenii Noi at the time, participating in a criminal investigation regarding another client. The Government submitted that they could not confirm or deny that such a call to the applicants’ lawyer had been made.
17.  At 5 p.m. on the same date, the Chişinău Court of Appeal examined the above-mentioned request, which the prosecution had submitted on 7 May 2010 and which sought an order for the applicants’ detention pending trial for sixty days. The applicants were absent from the hearing, one of them having refused to attend and the other having declared that he was unfit to attend. The applicant’s lawyer did not appear before the court and they were represented by a State-appointed lawyer. The latter’s position was summed up in the judgment as follows: “The defence lawyer objected to the prosecution’s request”.
18.  The court accepted the prosecution’s request, doing so for essentially the same reasons as those given in its judgment of 19 April 2010. Gh. I., one of the three judges, delivered a dissenting opinion. He found, inter alia, that the prosecution’s request of 7 May 2010 had only reached the Supreme Court of Justice on 11 May 2010. He also noted that in its request the prosecution had simply repeated the relevant legal provisions concerning the grounds for ordering detention pending trial, without any attempt to show any specific danger posed by the applicants, who had been detained for many years, or to precisely identify reasonable grounds for their detention. Gh. I. also disagreed with the examination of the request in the absence of both the applicants and the lawyer chosen by them. He noted that the same prosecutor, who on 7 May 2010 had requested an urgent hearing of his request concerning the applicants’ detention pending trial, had failed to inform the defence of that request, even though the parties had attended the hearing before the Supreme Court of Justice on the morning of 13 May 2010. Gh. I. concluded that the lawyer had been prevented from effectively representing his clients and that the applicants’ defence rights had been breached.
19.  The applicants’ lawyer appealed, relying on essentially the same grounds as those stated in his appeal of 22 April 2010. He also noted that the Chişinău Court of Appeal had ordered his clients’ detention two hours after the previous detention order had expired. They had therefore been detained for two hours without any legal basis. He finally referred to his inability to appear before the Chişinău Court of Appeal at such short notice as had been given to him on 13 May 2010 and noted that his clients had not been asked to comment on whether they agreed to be represented by a State-appointed lawyer.
20.  On 3 June 2010 the Supreme Court of Justice rejected the appeal as unfounded. It found that the rights of the defence had not been breached since the applicants had refused to appear in court. Their lawyer had been informed of the hearing, but could not appear in court because he had another case in Anenii Noi. Therefore, the lower court had correctly appointed another lawyer to attend the hearing. Moreover, the thirty-day detention order made on 19 April 2010 (which indicated that the period started on 14 April 2010) only ended on 14 May 2010 and therefore the applicants’ lawyer’s contention that they had been detained on 13 May 2010 for two hours without legal basis was unfounded. The court also found that after the quashing of the judgments convicting the applicants their detention pending trial was only possible in exceptional circumstances and based on a request by the prosecution. The prosecution had observed the deadlines set by law for submitting such a request (at least five days before the expiry of the previous detention order). The court finally found that:
“...the prosecutor’s request reveals the existence of reasonable evidence that exceptionally serious crimes have been committed and that there are sufficient grounds to believe that the accused may obstruct the proceedings and abscond from the court; the applicants previously absconded from the law-enforcement authorities, they were declared internationally wanted persons and were extradited from the Russian Federation; they have no social links or home ties, no known sources of income and no employment”.
21.  Subsequently, the applicants’ lawyers made further requests for their clients’ release on a regular basis (approximately once a month), while the prosecution asked for extensions of their detention pending trial. The courts accepted the prosecutors’ requests, while rejecting those made by the applicants’ lawyers. On 28 December 2010 the Supreme Court of Justice replaced the applicants’ detention with house arrest. On 4 February 2011 their house arrest was replaced with an undertaking not to leave the country during the investigation.